Civic Opportunities and Democratic Practices in Yemen and Libya after the Arab Spring

Abstract

The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings are often portrayed as a wave of failed revolutions that devolved rapidly into anarchic violence. Yemen and Libya appear to illustrate this dynamic par excellence, as interim governments collapsed in the face of violence, war, and humanitarian disasters by 2014. Although studies of these revolutions have proliferated in recent years, the fuller range of outcomes emerging from the Arab Spring at the local level and in everyday life have comprised a theoretical and empirical black box. Based on the grounded analysis of ethnographic data from Yemen and Libya during the post-Arab Spring interim periods (2012–2013), this study argues that although the 2011 revolutions failed to achieve their major goals, they succeeded in breaking down normative forms of incumbent authoritarian power across major urban centers. As a result, activists and ordinary citizens gained what we call newfound “civic opportunities” to make political claims in Yemen and Libya’s emergent civic spheres. Participants did so by repurposing their built environment for artistic expression, engaging in peaceful collective action, and publicly commemorating the victims and heroes of anti-regime resistance. While civic opportunities were later eclipsed by violence, we argue that revolutions failing to instigate democratic change from “above” can nevertheless create meaningful civic opportunities for democratic practices from “below.” The study concludes by suggesting how this mobilization matters for future waves of protest and democratization, and for the scholarly investigation of revolution outcomes more generally.